The Pandemic: Do Better This Time, Prepare for Next Time
Brandon Sun, May 31, 2021 - David McConkey
I had to double check to
make sure I wasn’t reading the Brandon Sun from a year ago. Surely,
the paper must be from May 2020? Surely we can’t have gone through
more than a year of the pandemic? Have we learned anything? Surely
after a year both the provincial government and the citizens can’t
be failing this badly?
I write this with great frustration and I know it is easy to stand
back and criticize. But we must take stock of where we are at. We
can’t forget about this current situation because we must learn to
do better, not only for now, but for the next time as well.
Last week a grim medical picture in Manitoba emerged from the
government and from a news conference called by a group of
physicians and medical school professors. More than 20,000 Manitoba
patients have had their surgeries delayed, some dying as they were
waiting. We heard that “the situation is catastrophic” and that our
health-care system is “in danger of collapse.”
What strikes me is that the two things we should have prioritized
are where we are falling down now. The first is bolstering our
hospital and ICU capacity to look after the sick. The second is
discovering how the disease is being spread so as to know how to
slow it down. But again, reading today’s paper is like reading the
paper from a year ago. Have we learned anything? And to think that
we now have over one-half of the adult population vaccinated with at
least one shot! We should be doing much better than before, not much
worse.
As to how we should have strengthened our hospital and ICU capacity,
I will leave that to the experts to determine. But I am astounded
that more wasn’t done. Again, we have had more than a year, and
hospital capacity was identified right at the beginning as a top
priority. To save our hospitals was the original reason to “flatten
the curve.”
Right now we are depending on Ontario to take our sick. But if that
was the plan all along, then we have been very fortunate. Because
there were times when Ontario was doing worse than Manitoba. What
then? And how would we be doing if we did not have half the
population vaccinated? So, now we can thank our lucky stars, but vow
to do better next time.
On to the second point: figuring out how the disease spreads. The
government appears to be mystified (or is not telling us) about how
the disease is being spread. This is a critical deficiency because
knowing the points of disease spread can guide us in changing our
behaviour and where the government can take action like imposing
restrictions. But government restrictions come with a cost and we
appear right now to not know where best to take action.
“Premier Blames Manitobans for Health Crisis” was the headline of a
Brandon Sun story last week. Premier Brian Pallister said that of
the almost 300 COVID-19 patients in hospital, more than 40% had not
bothered to get tested for the disease. This is an alarming number:
apparently they were sick yet living and interacting with the
community beforehand.
But the government should be sharing more information about those
hospitalized, so we can all know what we could be doing differently.
How did the sick people get the disease? Right now, we seem to be
guessing. The physicians’ group calls for a more severe lockdown and
closure of non-essential businesses. Yet Opposition leader Wab Kinew
asserts that many of those who are sick are workers in essential
workplaces. If the government knew more and communicated more, we
could all take action where warranted. But again, it's like we are
back in May 2020 when we really did not know.
Like many folks, I am annoyed with the restrictions banning visiting
outdoors with friends and family. From my reading of what has been
learned elsewhere, transmission of COVID-19 outdoors is negligible.
And outdoor socializing and exercising is regarded as good for
mental and physical health.
So if there is evidence showing that any Manitobans are getting the
disease from this kind of casual outdoor visiting, then please tell
us. Now being submitted to these restrictions leads me to think that
our leaders do not know what they are doing, and then have the gall
to blame us.
That Manitoba is the worst in Canada and the U.S. for new cases of
COVID-19 should be a loud wake-up call. As government and as
citizens, we must learn to do much better. For now. And for next
time.
See also:
The Role for Today’s Armchair Epidemiologists
Our Leaders Must Tell Us the Truth About the Pandemic
A Local Journal of the 1918 Flu
Here's an Idea: Raise Our Taxes to Pay for Pandemic
Will the Pandemic Shake Canadian Complacency?
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